DIY, Open-Source Headlamp Design

Bosavi LLC is a Berkeley, Calif., startup company launching a headlamp “designed to be charged from almost any power supply.” On a Kickstarter video company founder Dan Freschl is shown recharging the little white headlamp using a solar unit, a USB computer cord, and some kind of whizzing, cord-pull electro generator that serves as a mini power station in the outdoors.

The company’s namesake headlamp was made, Freschl says, to stop wasteful battery usage. It was a design “borne out of years of frustration at the inconvenience and environmental impact of AAA-powered headlamps,” he wrote.

Instead of disposable batteries, the Bosavi has a built-in lithium polymer battery that sits inside a machined aluminum heat-sink that doubles as a reflector for the light. Its beam comes from a 110-lumen LED, which is bright enough for use while hiking or rolling in a city on a bike at night.

Solar charge

Freschl’s project was self-funded and it “relied entirely on low cost tools such as open-source software, salvaged manufacturing equipment and community resources,” he wrote. Work on the headlamp began two years ago, and now this year after a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $20,000 Freschl is looking at a manufacturing schedule that will start soon.

“Bosavi’s story isn’t just about a headlamp,” Freschl wrote me. “But it’s about a new way of creating a business — I have done everything on this project by myself, including the design, development, programming, sourcing, branding, web-site creation, videography, and photography.”

To see Freschl’s neat new headlamp concept, go to Bosavi.com. Or fund the startup via Kickstarter at this link. —Stephen Regenold

Stephen Regenold is Founder of GearJunkie, which he launched as a nationally-syndicated newspaper column in 2002. As a journalist and writer, Regenold has covered the outdoors industry for two decades, including as a correspondent for the New York Times. A father of five, Regenold and his wife live in Minneapolis.